whipping sometimes
exert a singular fascination on some persons of sensitive emotional
temperament. A friend, a clergyman, who has read many novels tells me that
he has been struck by the frequency with which novelists describe such
scenes with much luxury of detail; his list includes novels by well-known
religious writers of both sexes. In some of these cases there is reason to
believe that the writers felt this sexual association of whipping.

It is natural that an interest in whipping should be developed very early
in childhood, and, indeed, it enters very frequently into the games of
young children, and constitutes a much relished element of such games,
more especially among girls. I know of many cases in which young girls
between 6 and 12 years of age took great pleasure in games in which the
chief point consisted in unfastening each other's drawers and smacking
each other, and some of these girls, when they grew older, realized that
there was an element of sexual enjoyment in their games. It has indeed, it
seems, always been a child's game, and even an amusement of older persons,
to play at smacking each other's nates. In _The Presbyter's Lash_ in 1661
a young woman is represented as stating that she had done this as a child,
and in ancient France it was a privileged custom on Innocents' Day
(December 28th) to smack all the young people found lying late in bed; it
was a custom which, as Clement Marot bears witness, was attractive to
lovers.

If we turn to the histories I have brought together in Appendix B
we find various references to whipping more or less clearly
connected with the rudimentary sexual feelings of childhood.

I am acquainted with numerous cases in which the idea of
whipping, or the impulse to whip or be whipped, distinctly
exists, though usually, when persisting to adult life, only in a
rudimentary form. History I in the Appendix B presents a
well-marked instance. I may quote the remarks in another case of
a lady regarding her early feelings: "As a child the idea of
being whipped excited me, but only in connection with a person I
loved, and, moreover, one who had the right to correct me. On one
occasion I was beaten with the back of a brush, and the pain was
sufficient to overcome any excitement; so that, ever after, this
particular form of whipping left me unaffected, though the
excitement still remained connected with forms of which I